by Bova, Ben
Sitting on a stool in the bio lab, Cardenas tried not to look at her wristwatch, nor at the digital clock on the wall above Negroponte’s workbench. She knew Manny’s mission plan by heart. He should be just stepping out of the transfer rocket now and starting to get into the aeroshell heat shield.
“Are the muffins all right?”
Cardenas snapped her attention to Negroponte’s long, almond-eyed face. The biologist looked very serious, almost worried.
“The muffins,” Negroponte asked again. “Are they all right? The cafeteria didn’t have—”
“They’re fine,” Cardenas said. “My mind wandered. I’m sorry.”
Four smallish muffins remained on the makeshift placemat that Negroponte had spread upon her workbench, together with the crumbs of the two the women were already chewing on and a pair of steaming plastic coffee mugs. A working breakfast.
“Just what is it that you wanted to show me?” Cardenas asked, wiping crumbs from her lips and then reaching for her coffee.
Negroponte pushed her hair back off her face with both hands. “These bugs that Nadia discovered …” Her voice trailed off.
“Bugs?” Despite herself Cardenas smiled. “Is that the biological term for them?”
Utterly serious, Negroponte replied, “I don’t know what to call them. I don’t even know if they’re actually alive.”
“But Nadia said—”
“I know. I worked with her. We wrote the report together.”
“And you said that the specimens in the ice particles were alive. ‘Biologically active’ is the phrase you used, isn’t it?”
Negroponte smiled minimally. “You read our paper.”
“I certainly did.”
Negroponte clicked on the monitor screen at her elbow. Cardenas saw dark blobs pulsating slowly.
“The samples from the rings?” she guessed.
“Yes,” said Negroponte. “The vid is speeded up by a factor of one hundred from real time.”
Eying the screen, Cardenas said, “They move. They seem to interact with their environment. You’ve measured metabolic reactions in them. They’re alive. What’s the problem?”
“Is a virus alive?” Negroponte asked.
Cardenas hesitated. “I’m not a biologist—”
“Don’t be modest. You know the answer as well as I do.”
“So?”
“A virus can remain dormant, nothing more than a nanometer-sized spore, for centuries. Millennia, even.”
“But when it comes in contact with a living cell—”
“It becomes active. It invades the cell’s nucleus and takes over its reproductive machinery to produce more of itself.”
“And the cell eventually dies,” Cardenas said.
“Not before the virus has reproduced itself a millionfold or more.”
Nodding toward the display screen, Cardenas asked, “You think the organisms in the rings are viruses?”
Negroponte shook her head solemnly. “Let me ask my next question.”
“Go right ahead,” said Cardenas, intrigued.
“Is a nanomachine alive?”
Gaeta thought the aeroshell looked like a shallow bathtub. Attached to the hull of the transfer craft like an opened parasol, its white heat shield ceramic exterior glowed warmly in the saffron light from Saturn. The return pod package stuck up above the shell looked like the fat handle of an umbrella. It contained the return rocket thruster and its fuel, and was covered in similar heat-resistant ceramic. It was connected to the aeroshell’s rim by three slim buckyball struts.
Inside the armored excursion suit, Gaeta floated out to the end of the tether he’d attached to the transfer craft’s hull, dangling in the emptiness of space while he waited for Wanamaker to stow the emptied container of decontaminating nanomachines back inside the airlock. Space isn’t empty, he reminded himself. This vacuum is filled with hard radiation. He turned himself around by swinging his arms until he faced the overpowering radiance of Saturn and its rings. Down at the planet’s south polar region he could see the bright shimmering of its aurora. Enough radiation to fry a man in seconds, Gaeta knew, if he wasn’t protected.
The airlock hatch opened like a glowing eye in the shadowed darkness of the transfer ship’s hull. A lone figure glided out, seemingly wearing nothing but coveralls. Gaeta knew that Wanamaker was in a suit composed of nanofibers, and he was protected as well as a man in a cumbersome old-fashioned hard-shell space suit. Still, he shook his head. They’ll never get me in one of those flimsy damned things. Looks like nothing more than a plastic raincoat and hood.
“Ready to get into the bathtub?” Wanamaker’s voice crackled slightly in Gaeta’s earphones.
With a nod that Wanamaker couldn’t see, Gaeta said, “Let’s do it before Fritz starts hyperventilating.”
Sure enough, von Helmholtz’s testy, impatient voice came through from the mission control center aboard Goddard, “You are already three minutes behind schedule. The timeline must be adhered to!”
“I’m getting into the aeroshell,” Gaeta answered. “Don’t get yourself lathered up.”
Timeline, he thought as he climbed up the rungs built into one of the connectors and slowly swung a leg over the rim of the aeroshell. Even in the microgravity of orbit it took an effort to move inside the suit. The servomotors could help with walking and normal leg movements; this maneuver was more like climbing into a saddle on a tall horse.
It unnerved Gaeta slightly to see Wanamaker puttering around him in nothing more substantial than the nanosuit.
“How’s it feel inside that baggy?” he asked as he lowered himself to lay down on his back inside the aeroshell’s bowl.
“Fine,” answered Wanamaker. “A lot easier moving around than in a regular suit. Or that clunker you’re in.”
“Clunker?” Gaeta bristled inwardly. “This suit’s seen me through a helluva lot of weird situations, pal.”
Wanamaker clicked the connecting clamps to rings fitted into the torso of Gaeta’s suit. In the vacuum of space there was no sound, but Gaeta felt the hooks clicking into place. He was flat on his back now, staring up at the return pod package looming above him.
Fritz came back on the radio and went through the checklist with Wanamaker, who unhooked a hand-sized camera from the belt of his suit and played it over Gaeta’s supine body, giving Fritz visual proof that every clamp was properly in place.
“Very well,” Fritz said, sounding reluctant. “The connectors are set.”
God forbid that fregado should ever say he’s satisfied with anything, Gaeta grumbled to himself.
“Admiral Wanamaker,” Fritz called. “My congratulations. You’ve made up seventy full seconds of our timeline.”
“Thank you,” said Wanamaker.
Gaeta was too stunned to say anything.
Wanamaker rapped lightly on Gaeta’s helmet. “Good luck, buddy.”
Gaeta nodded again, even though he realized Wanamaker couldn’t see it inside the suit’s heavy helmet. “Thanks, Jake.”
Wanamaker disappeared from his view. All that Gaeta could see now was the ceramic-coated return pod standing above him like a massive triphammer ready to squash him flat. Beyond it, the stars: unwinking eyes staring down at him. The stars, he thought. What would it be like to fly to Alpha Centuari, or one of those stars that has Earth-sized planets orbiting around them? Are they really like other Earths? What a kick it would be to get there first, before anybody else, and see for myself what’s there.
Dimly he heard Fritz and Pancho talking through the countdown. Fritz and his fuckin’ timeline, Gaeta thought. We’ve got enough lag time in the schedule to do everything twice, just about.
Then he heard Pancho: “On my mark, separation in ten seconds. Mark!”
Nine, eight … Gaeta counted with her.
At zero he felt a slight nudge in the small of his back. No sense of motion at all until the aeroshell yawed forty degrees as programmed. Saturn slid into his view, big and beautiful.
Gaeta realized that this might be the last time he saw it.
28 MAY 2096: TITAN ENTRY
Clamped to the aeroshell, his hands and boots wedged into cleats built into the ends of the x-frame on which he was stretched, Gaeta lay on his back with nothing to do except think. His backpack contained the parasail that would float him down to Titan’s surface, plus the life-support system and the thermionic nuclear generator that powered his suit. The nuke can run the suit for weeks, Gaeta knew. But there’s only a twelve-hour supply of fresh air and water, and I’ve gone through almost half of that already. The recyclers can stretch that to a couple of days if I need to.
He shook his head inside the helmet. I’m not staying inside this iron maiden for a couple of days, he told himself. Get down to Urbain’s misbehaving machine, plug in the package of nanos, and get the hell back out again. One hour on the surface, then back to the transfer ship and home to the habitat.
Back to Kris.
I’m staying down there just long enough to do the job and get credit for being the first man on Titan. In the headlines again. One last stunt. The best and the last.
“Aerodynamic heating has begun,” Fritz’s voice announced, flat and cool. “You should begin to experience some turbulence shortly.”
“Smooth so far,” Gaeta said.
He could see that the stars were drifting past now, and one side of the rocket pack above him looked brighter. It’ll get cherry red before we’re through, he knew.
The shell began to shudder, and for the first time since they’d gone into orbit around Titan Gaeta sensed a feeling of weight.
“Point five g,” Fritz voice said calmly. “Point seven … point nine …”
The front face of the rocket pack was glowing now and Gaeta could see tongues of flame-hot gases flickering past the rim of the aeroshell. Good footage for the vids, Gaeta thought. I hope Berkowitz is getting it all down and transmitting it back to Earth.
The shell began to rock like a leaf tossed into a stormy sea. Gaeta felt nauseous. Gesu Christo, he thought, don’t let me upchuck inside my helmet!
All around him the rim of the shell blazed with sheets of white-hot gas. Gaeta knew that the superconducting coil built into the rim of the shell enveloped him in a magnetic field that deflected the ionized gas away from him; still he sweated inside his suit. The shell started to shake so violently that Gaeta’s vision blurred. The rocket pack hanging over him seemed to be on fire. He squeezed his eyes shut and tightened his grip on the cleats built into the bathtub, holding on as hard as he could.
“They can’t be nanomachines,” Cardenas said, staring at the photomicrographs Negroponte had put onto her benchtop screen.
“But their nuclei are crystalline,” the biologist said, pointing with a long, manicured finger. “They don’t look biological at all.”
“Not terrestrial biology, that’s for certain.”
Negroponte looked distressed. “Dr. Cardenas, I—”
“Kris,” Cardenas said automatically.
“Kris, then.” Negroponte bit her lips, then went on, “Nadia’s back on Earth being congratulated for having found a new form of organisms in Saturn’s rings. But maybe they’re not organisms! Maybe they’re machines, nanomachines.”
Cardenas shook her head stubbornly. “They can’t be nanomachines.”
“Why not?”
“Because nanomachines don’t exist in nature. Somebody has to build them.” Before Negroponte could reply, Cardenas added, “And we sure didn’t. Besides, they’re not like any nanos that I’ve ever seen.”
“But what if they were built by someone? Someone other than us?”
“Intelligent aliens? Machine-building aliens?” Cardenas tried to scoff at the idea, but could only manage a weak snicker.
“It’s not impossible,” Negroponte said. “Those giant whale things in Jupiter’s ocean might be intelligent. And there’s that artifact in the Belt …”
“That’s nothing more than a rumor.”
“Is it?”
“Isn’t it?”
Negroponte got up from her laboratory stool stiffly, as if she’d been sitting there too long. Gesturing at the display screen, she said firmly, “They are not biological organisms. I’m convinced of that.”
“Despite the paper you and Wunderly wrote.”
Nodding. “Despite our paper.”
Cardenas looked from the biologist’s distraught face to the display screen showing the crystalline lattice of the ring creature’s nucleus and back to Negroponte again.
“Look, you’re dealing with extraterrestrial biology here. It doesn’t have to look like our own.”
“The Martian organisms have a recognizable analog of DNA in their nuclei. So do the airborne biota of Jupiter.”
“They can’t be machines,” Cardenas insisted. “Who built them? There’s no intelligent creatures in the solar system capable of that level of technology except us, and we certainly didn’t put those things in Saturn’s rings.”
Negroponte replied immediately, “Perhaps whoever built them has gone.”
“You mean they’re extinct?”
The biologist shrugged her shoulders. “Or perhaps they were visitors from another star system and they seeded our worlds.”
“With nanomachines?”
“And life.”
Cardenas sank back onto her lab stool. “Sheer speculation, Yolanda.” Yet she felt a tendril of fear shimmering along her spine.
“TNOs?” Tavalera looked both surprised and annoyed as he sat across the cafeteria table from Holly.
She nodded enthusiastically. “Stavenger put the idea into my head. There’s zillions of’em! That’s where comets come from.”
The cafeteria was half empty at midafternoon, but still there was enough clattering of dishware and chattering of conversations to force Tavalera to raise his voice.
“But Neptune’s orbit is more’n twenty astronomical units from here,” he objected. “That’s twice as far as we are from the Sun, for chrissakes.”
“I know,” Holly said as she chomped heartily on a pseudo-burger. She gulped down her food and went on, “I thought it was too far, too. But then I looked into the astrogation program.”
Tavalera’s face fell. “Don’t tell me, I already know: It’s not distance per se but delta vee that counts. I studied astrogation, you know.”
“So you understand,” Holly said. “From where we are we could send ships out to the Kuiper Belt and pick up really big chunks of ice and nudge them into orbits that’ll bring them here. Or to the Earth/Moon system, or the Asteroid Belt, wherever! They’ll be going downhill, gravitationally, once we push ’em a little.”
Despite himself, Tavalera grinned at her excitement. “You could get your sister to run the operation.”
“Right! Panch would love it!”
He took a forkful of his own burger and munched on it thoughtfully for a few moments while Holly said, “I knew you’d understand, Raoul. We could get water without mining the rings. We could get rich without running into a ban from the IAA.”
“You know,” Tavalera said grudgingly, “you wouldn’t even have to go out to the Kuiper Belt.”
“What do you mean?”
“Comets come our way all the time. They get perturbed out of their TNO orbits and fall into the inner solar system.”
“Only one or two each year,” she said.
“More like ten or twelve. But they’re big, Holly. Kilometers across. A year’s worth of water in each one of’em. More.”
“We could capture comets!”
Tavalera nodded. “You could become the water supplier for Selene and everybody else without touching the rings.”
“Utterly cosmic! Wait’ll I spring this on Eberly.” Holly was bouncing on her chair so hard people at other tables turned to stare at her. “I can’t wait for the next debate!”
Tavalera realized he had just slit his own throat.
28 MAY 2096: FREE FALL
The shaking slowed and then stopped altogether. Gaeta opened his eyes. The bath of fiery gases that surrounded the aeroshell had dimmed considerably. He felt weight, felt the shell swaying to and fro as it dropped like a falling leaf through the thick, murky cloud layer of Titan’s atmosphere.
No stars to be seen. He thought about activating the infrared viewing system but that would mean letting go of the hand cleats to press buttons on the keypad built into the wrist of his suit. He had no intention of releasing his grip on the cleats. Not yet, he told himself. Ride this sucker down as far as she’ll go. You’ll have plenty of time for heroics later on.
“ … past plasma sheath blackout,” he heard Fritz’s voice saying, sounding slightly annoyed. “Can you hear me?”
“I hear you,” Gaeta replied, knowing that his transmission was being relayed off one of the minisatellites Urbain had placed in orbit around Titan, then back to the habitat in Saturn orbit. It took damned near twelve seconds for signals to make the round trip.
“You are through the blackout,” Fritz said needlessly. Gaeta thought he sounded just the slightest bit relieved.
“Yeah. I’m floating down through the lower layers of the atmosphere now. The sky’s clouded over completely but there’s enough light down here to see okay.”
Then he waited twelve seconds for Fritz’s response to reach him. “Once the aeroshell destructs you can activate your infrared receptors.”
“Yeah. Right.”
Glancing at the timeline display splashed on the left side of his helmet visor, Gaeta saw that the shell was set to break up in another three and a half minutes. Two hundred and ten seconds. Time enough for housekeeping chores.
“Check all your internal systems,” Fritz commanded.
“Copy systems check.”
Gingerly, Gaeta snapped the grippers at the end of his right arm onto the x-frame’s cleat and wriggled his arm out of the suit’s sleeve. Then he tapped on the keyboard inside the suit’s chest, going through its life-support systems first. The displays flashed on his visor: air supply, pumps, heaters, water circulation, all in the green. He went on to check the suit’s servomotors, the structural integrity of its outer shell, then the sensor systems. All within nominal limits.
